sábado, 15 de marzo de 2008

INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM ROBINSON Latin America, state power and the challenge to global capital

In this interview Robinson, professor inthe Department of Sociology at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara,traverses a wide terrain, from anin-depth historical summation of thesweeping structural changes that have occurredin Latin America over the past fewdecades to a critical assessment of movementsin Bolivia and Mexico. Robinson’spublications include: Transnational Conflicts:Central America, Globalization and SocialChange (2003), and A Theory of GlobalCapitalism: Production, State and Class in aTransnational World (2004), and a newbook on Latin America and globalization isforthcoming.Peter Brogan: Why do you think it’s so criticalat this juncture to write a book onLatin America and globalisation? Consideringthe many resistance movements thathave emerged in the past decade do youthink that Latin America is at a special historicaljuncture in its resistance to globalcapitalism?

William I. Robinson: Latin America is at aspecial historical conjuncture in terms ofresistance to global capitalism. The neoliberalmodel became the dominant model. Itachieved hegemony in the Gramsciansense, when it became a consensus amongglobal elites. Elites which might have beenopposed to neoliberalism succumbed tothe program, and even among some popularforces there was a resignation, a sensethat there was no alternative to neoliberalism.

But that hegemony cracked in thelate ’90s and into the early 21st-century.Reallyone major symbolic turning point is theArgentine crisis. From that point on, neoliberalismis moribund, its hegemony iscracked, it’s in crisis. It is moribund worldwidebut particularly in Latin America.Thus, when we look worldwide at resistanceto global capitalism we can see thatLatin America is in the forefront of that resistanceand of the breakdown of neo-liberalism’shegemony. It is also in LatinAmerica that the origins of possible alternativesare emerging in the strugglesagainst neoliberalism.Latin America is in the forefront of theupsurge of social movements, of revolutionarymovements, and challenges to theneo-liberal state and to the dominance ofglobal capitalist groups. This is the structuralbackground and what’s at stake inLatin America right now.What will replacethe neoliberal model? Will it be some typeof reformed global capitalism which willallow global capital to gain a new lease onlife? Or will neoliberalism be replaced by amore radical alternative, such as whatmight be under construction in Venezuelaor in Bolivia? It’s too early to say.Honor Brabazon: Wherever we look in LatinAmerica popular movements still seemto be facing that classic question of how toengage the state. Given the deep structuralAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200786Latin America, state powerand the challenge to global capitalWilliam I. Robinson interviewed by Honor Brabazon and Peter Broganin September 2006 (original available at www.leftturn.org)changes that have occurred in these countriessince the 1970s with the rise of neoliberalismand a truly global capitalist economycan you discuss how contemporarymovements have been dealing with thesechanging dynamics and how they’re engagingwith the state and international institutions?Do you see the nation-state as aviable vehicle for revolutionary changetoday?Robinson: If I jump to the last thing yousaid, no, the nation-state does not providea viable alternative. It’s not Bill Robinsonsaying that, it’s the leadership of the Bolivarianrevolution in Venezuela. What theyhave figured out is that their survival, thesurvival of the popular project of transformationin Venezuela, must be a widerSouth American and Latin American project.They might not articulate what I’msaying in the same theoretical terms, butthe idea that there would be a populartransformation of global capitalism thatdevelops in Venezuela without linking thatproject to ongoing continental coordinatedtransformations throughout South Americais an idea which doesn’t correspond toreality. I think that Venezuelans, by way ofexample,would agree with this.Brogan: The Venezuelan case is a very interestingone because in it you see the developmentof dual power structures outsideof the nation-state while at the sametime people at the executive level and militaryare building connections with Boliviaand Cuba in an effort to develop a regionalbloc. So in a sense they understand thatyou can’t simply use simply your own nationalstate to create radical change in theglobal system, but you can use it to createa regional resistance block. What do youthink about that?Robinson: It’s not my position that the nation-state is irrelevant. The reality is thatwe have a global capitalist system whichhas entered a new phase in the last coupledecades which has changed the terms inwhich we understand the system.Yet, challengesin this new phase are still organisedalong nation-state lines in terms of politicalauthority and in terms of formal statepower. And that’s the contradiction.What this means is that social forcesand political forces still need to challengestate power at the national level, to make abid for state power at that level, and thenfrom there to continue to challenge theglobal capitalist system. One of the thingsthat’s changed fundamentally in LatinAmerica is that the earlier revolutionarystrategy took the organisational form ofthe vanguard party and was aimed atbringing together politically various classes,particularly workers and peasants. Itwould then use that mobilisation to overthrowthe state and then implement a revolutionarytransformation of society. Weknow that this model failed.Yet, in its placegrew a similarly failed understanding ofwhat’s required to transform society: thatthere would be no need any more to talkabout state power, to talk any longer aboutpolitical organisations that could operatenot just in civil society but also in politicalsociety. The height of this kind of thinkingis expressed theoretically in John Holloway’sbook Changing the World WithoutTaking Power, the idea that we can transformfundamentally capitalist social relationsand overcome relations of dominationand subordination without honing inon the state, just changing things at thelevel of civil society. Of course I’m caricaturingHolloway a bit, but the thing is thatthat’s the essential argument, and that argumenthas been bought by some leadersof social and political movements aroundAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200787the world.So, we have two extremes. The first isthe old model of social and political forcesmobilising through political organisations– through a vanguard – in order to overthrowthe existing state, take power, andtransform society. The other is that youdon’t need to think about state power atall. But, as Venezuela and Bolivia demonstrate,the key question remains how canpopular forces and classes utilise statepower to transform social relations, productionrelations, and so forth. And onceyou raise that question, you have to talkabout what type of political vehicle, whattype of political expression, will interfacebetween the popular forces on the onehand and state structures on the other.That’s the big question raised by the currentround of social and political strugglein Latin America: what’s the relation betweensocial movements of the left, thestate, and political organisation?Previously there was a vertical model,but the emphasis for the last 15 or 20 yearshas been on horizontal relations amongdifferent social groups. The indigenous organisationsin Latin America have spearheadedthe new model of networking andhorizontal relations, building much moredemocratic relations from the ground up.That’s great, and I support that politically,and we can analyse its importance, but atsome point you need to talk about howvertical and horizontal intersect. This isprecisely one of the problems, for example,with the autonomous movements in Argentina,among others. In attempting toovercome the old vertical model of vanguardismand bureaucratism, it’s gone tothe other extreme. Without any politicalhammer or political vehicle you can’t actuallybid for state power, synchronise theforces necessary for radical transformation.I want to find a balance between thesetwo positions. Take the models of Braziland Venezuela: in Brazil you have a situationwhere popular forces, revolutionaryforces, represented in the workers’ partytake state power.But there is no mass autonomousorganisation from below. Withthis lack of autonomous organisation frombelow the popular classes could not exertthe mass pressure, exercise the necessarycontrol, over the Workers Party governmentso that it would confront global capitaland implement a popular program. TheBrazilian model shows that, even whenrevolutionary groups take state power –absent the countervailing force from popularclasses below to oblige those groups torespond to their interests from the heightsof the state – the structural power of globalcapital can impose itself on direct statepower and impose its project of global capitalism.In other words, global class struggle“passes through” the national state inthis way. And the experience of Brazilshows us what happens unless there’s amass mobilisation from below that placespermanent pressure on the state evenwhen it’s taken over by revolutionaryforces.Now, counterpose Brazil to Venezuela.In Venezuela, you have a situation wheresimilarly radical forces have come to statepower and there are tremendous pressuresfrom the global system to moderate andundermine any fundamental structuralchange. Yet in Venezuela, unlike Brazil,there’s mass mobilisation from below andthat mass mobilisation pressures the revolutionariesin the state not to succumb tothe structural pressures of global capitalbut rather to carry out a process of socialtransformation. Of course this is on ongoingprocess, and both the forces of globalcapital and those of popular majorities areAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200788constantly in struggle around the directionin which these states will move. You haveto have permanent independent pressureof mass social movements from belowagainst the state but at the same time youcan’t talk about any project of transformationwithout also taking state power.Brogan: More than being an incredible inspirationto movements across the world,the popular uprisings in Latin America areserving as an experimental ground whereyou have Bolivia on the one hand andVenezuela on the other, two very differentmodels of dealing with state power andmass mobilisation from below. Then youhave what’s happening with the Zapatistasin Mexico right now with the “othercampaign,” which reflects a quite differentway of trying to deal with this nationalissue in the midst of the election scandaland the mass mobilizations advocating arecount of the presidential election backedby the PRD. What do you think of thesethree examples, especially considering thesocial forms resistance takes in each caseand how power and agency are being conceptualisedand transformed in these threecases?Robinson: I, along with hundreds of millionsof people around the world, am agreat admirer of the Zapatistas and havetaken tremendous inspiration from the Zapatistastruggle. But we need to be realisticabout something. The Zapatista projecthas taken the Holloway argument to theactual real-life, political-historical arena.The problem over the last couple years isthat the Zapatistas’ principle strategy ofmobilising from below and not wanting toget corrupted with the matter of statepower—which might have been a correctthing to do in the early ’90s, or even upuntil a couple years ago — is not the correctthing over the last six months. In thecurrent historical moment, the politicallynecessary thing to do—the only thing todo — was to participate in the strugglethat the PRD and Manuel López Obradorwere waging around the presidency—especiallyonce we moved into the periodwhen the fraud became clear and of an upsurgeof mass struggle against that fraud— despite all his limitations of the PRDand Lopez Obrador, despite everything wecould say critically about them.The only thing a revolutionary could doat that time was to join in and talk abouthaving state power and those elections.And so the Zapatistas, not doing this, stagnated.They have had less and less influenceon Mexican society. First of all, the socialbase of the Zapatistas outside of theindigenous communities in Mexico is increasinglyyoung people, those that mayadhere to theWorld Social Forum process;this is a radical oppositional base butyou’re not talking about a mass workingclassbase. The supporters of the Zapatistasoutside of the indigenous communities,such as in Mexico City, have stagnated, andinside Chiapas, Zapatismo may still be aforce of counter-hegemony or even ofhegemony in some communities, but thefact is that global capitalism has mademajor headway inside Chiapas itself between1994 and 2006. They don’t even havethe leverage in Chiapas that they had a fewyears ago.So that’s the pitfall of following the Hollowaymodel, of everything from belowwithout looking above: it forgets about thestate at a particular historic juncture whenstate power is on the agenda. That’s thepitfall and a lesson to take from Mexico.What is the lesson for elsewhere? ForVenezuela, Bolivia? The mass organisations,the indigenous organizations andAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200789other popular movements should continuetheir mobilisation, not pull back and notrest for one moment, continue to pressurethe Morales [Bolivian] government, or theChavez government, inside and outside thestate.Brogan: Just to backup for one second, intalking about the Zapatistas in Mexico incomparison to say the movements inEcuador or Bolivia what do you think it isabout the Zapatistas that explains whythey’ve drawn so much attention frommovements around the world? Can youelaborate on their embodiment of this Hollowayline on power? What is the real differencebetween the movements inEcuador, which is arguably the strongestindigenous movement on the continent,and the Zapatistas and other indigenousgroups in Mexico or the groups in Bolivia?Robinson: While there is are tremendousdifferences we should first point outthat all these organisations are obviouslyunited around a project of ending 500 yearsof oppression and discrimination, andracism and colonialism. But putting thataside for a minute, what happened inEcuador is that CONAIE and other indigenousorganisations are constantly challengingstate power. They overthrew fivegovernments in a row. The Zapatistas onthe other hand weren’t interested in MexicoCity or who was in the presidentialpalace. In Ecuador, however, where themovements overthrew five governments,things reached a point a few years agowhere they realised that they had the capacityto overthrow the government butthey didn’t have an alternative. They didn’thave the capacity, once the governmentwas overthrown, to place in power politicalforces and state representatives that woulddefend their interests and implement theirprogram. And so what happened as a resultis that CONAIE had to depend on analliance with Lucio Gutierrez, an armycolonel.When Gutierrez betrayed the popularmovement, when he turned to neoliberalismand delivered the country toglobal capitalism, CONAIE got very burntfor having backed him and having broughthim into the presidency. That did a lot ofdamage to CONAIE’s credibility with theirbase, to the strategy of putting somebodyin the state who would represent their interests.So here we can see the complexities ofpopular and mass struggles at this historicjuncture. In the October 2006 elections theindigenous faced again this major dilemma– should they support another candidateand risk getting burned? Should they putforward an indigenous candidate along theBolivian model? They debated all of thisand as you interview me [September 2006]we don’t know the outcome. But the pointis they never took the Zapatistas’ route ofsaying,we’ll stay here in the highlands andthe Amazonian region and forget about thegovernment, about state power. The sameis true in Bolivia. The organisations therenever did that, but rather put Morales inpower.There are a number of reasons why theZapatista model looks so attractive aroundthe world. I think that one can be traced toa historic moment in the early 1990s, at theheight of neoliberalism as a monolithicproject where no one could question it.Even some – indeed, many – former revolutionariesadhered to the idea that “thereis no alternative,” that you just have to getthe best deal for your country possiblewithin global capitalism. It’s in that environmentthat the Zapatista uprising of January1, 1994 took place. It was a wake-upcall that said, NO!, the lowest of the low,AFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200790the indigenous in Chiapas and by extensionthe downtrodden everywhere, aregoing to fight back. There is an alternativefuture and we’re going to try to reach outfor it. And that’s why the Zapatistas are soinspirational. They represented the beginningof the end of neoliberalism’s hegemony.Another reason why the Zapatistashave had such a following worldwide is becauseanarchism has made a big comeback,and the Zapatistas’ feelings on engagementwith the state have been attractive to theanarchist current worldwide.Brogan: The turn the Zapatistas havemade with the “Sixth Declaration” and the“other campaign” seems to be putting intoquestion these ideas of not seizing statepower and that you can build an alternativeoutside the state, autonomous enclavesof revolution if you will. It in factseems to be a recognition of the failure ofthat kind of approach in that it is trying tobuild some kind of national project thatdoesn’t say we have the exact blueprint forrevolution but are continuing the approachof leading by following, leading by listening.Do you see any kind of hope in thesenew projects, especially how they are interactingwith large mobilisations happeningat the time of this interview in supportof Obrador and the PRD?Robinson: I want to reiterate that we areall students and supporters of the Zapatistastruggle. I am not dismissing out ofhand the Zapatistas political point on thestate and social power, but here’s the thing:the Zapatistas launched the Sixth Declarationand the Other Campaign at the exactmoment at which the political lightningrod in Mexico was shifting to the electoralprocess. As revolutionaries, you need to beable to shift strategy and tactics as youmove along, as history actually unfolds. Sothat’s my criticism: that there is a positionof not getting involved with the state, notgetting involved with the elections, notgoing for state power. When you elevatethat position to a rigid principle it is a mistake,and that’s what’s may have happenedwith the Zapatistas in Mexico.Brabazon: Can you talk a little bit aboutthese indigenous movements as a wholeand what the significance of the rise ofthem has been and how they are changingthe way that we in the North are thinkingabout power, politics and social change?Robinson: That’s a good question with noshort answer. Some argue that revolutionaryforces for much of the 20th century andwith few exceptions emphasised buildingas broad a base among popular classes aspossible, and in doing so ignored particularethnic and racial oppression and dismissedthe indigenous reality. While the reality of20th century revolutionary struggles cannotbe reduced to this observation, thiswas indeed quite true regarding the Left,for instance in Guatemala, in Peru, inColombia, and elsewhere.But this situation changes with the collapseof the traditional Left project in LatinAmerica after the 1980s. Indigenous communitieshave organised on a new basisand have been at the forefront of the upsurgein social movements and in devisingnew ways of organising from below tochallenge the oppressions embedded in socialand cultural relations and the capitalist-colonial state. Indigenous movementshave been at the forefront of popularmovements in Latin America over the last10 or 15 years. Indeed, just look at Colombiaright now, where the indigenous havespearheaded the whole national resistanceto a Free Trade Agreement with the UnitedStates. Of course many problems have yetAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200791to be resolved, including the puzzle of howto move forward, of how you preserve autonomyat the base and make sure that thedistinct interests of different communitiesand different groups can advance. Particularlyimportant is how to address thiswhile at the same time linking together diversesocial forces and diverse communitiesand political forces around a collectiveproject of change.Brogan: Can you discuss the connectionsbetween the rise of indigenous movementsto the structural transformations that havetaken place in Latin America with the deeppenetration of global capital, especially as itrelates to the indigenous relationship withresources?Robinson: Firstly we need to understandthe difference between the last round ofstructural changes in the ’60s and ’70s tothose in the 21st century. Latin America hasgone through successive waves of everdeeperintegration into world capitalism.Each time there’s a new integration or reintegrationto world capitalism there hasbeen a corresponding fundamental changein the social and class structures of LatinAmerica, and the leading economic activitiesaround which social classes and groupshave organised and mobilised. So themodel that we had in the 20th century wasbased on industrialisation through importsubstitution, on traditional agro-exports,on development programs based on a nationaleconomy with protective barriersand so forth. This model involved an activerole for the state in accumulation and anoligarchical political corporatist coalition.Corporatist populism and import substitutionindustrialisation was the 20th centurymodel in Latin America. But that modelcorresponded to the pre-globalisationphase of world capitalism – national corporatecapitalism rooted in a Keynesianstate that regulated accumulation. All ofthis was at the nation-state level, as wasthe social democratic models in advancedcapitalist countries.But the new globalization model of accumulationbecomes consolidated in LatinAmerica from the 1980s into the 21st century.In this new model, the commandingheights of accumulation in Latin Americaare no longer the old traditional agro-exportsor national industry.First, with regard to industry, accumulationis now based on integrated nationalindustrial activity into global productionchains as component phases. So we havethe maquiladoras, which may have startedalong the US-Mexico border but have nowspread throughout Latin America, especiallyin the Greater Caribbean Basin. Andsecondly, small and medium industrial enterprisesall over Latin America—knownby their Spanish acrynom PYMES—havereoriented from the national to the globalmarket by becoming local subcontractorsand outsourcers for transnational corporationsand for global production chains.Secondly, you have the explosivegrowth of the global tourist industry inLatin America. I have been researching this,and the data shows that this industry issweeping across Latin America and theworld. In fact, tourism was the largest singleeconomic sector worldwide until it wasreplaced in first place by the energy sectorwith the rise in oil prices. Every single LatinAmerican country has been swept up intothe global tourist industry, which now employsmillions of people, accounts for agrowing portion of national revenue andgross national product, and penetrates numerous“traditional” communities andbrings them into global capitalism. Formany countries – including Mexico, CostaAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200792Rica,Guatemala, Ecuador, and most of theCaribbean nations, among others – it is thefirst or second most important source offoreign exchange.Third, there’s a new type of transnationalagribusiness that has replaced theold agro-export and domestic agriculturalmodels. Every country – every Latin Americannational agricultural system – is beingswept up in it the new global agribusinesscomplex. If you go in Brazil or Argentina orBolivia or Paraguay, in those four countriesthe biggest export crop now is soy. It’s nolonger beef coming out of Argentina. It’s nolonger coffee and sugar coming out ofBrazil. It’s King Soy. Soy is firstly an industrialproduct. Secondly it’s used as feed foranimals all around the world.And third it’sincreasingly a basic input for the globalfood industry, for the full range ofprocessed and packaged food going to theglobal supermarket. And soy plantationsset up by transnational agribusiness andrun as capitalist “factories in the field” aredisplacing millions of small holders, eatingup the rainforests, and so on. In Mexico,the biggest agricultural activity right nowis no longer corn and beans but winterfruits and vegetables for the global supermarket.The fourth commanding height of accumulationin Latin America now is the exportof labor to the global economy. Immigrantlabor is exported across Latin Americato intensive zones of accumulation andto the global economy, to the UnitedStates, Europe, and beyond. In turn, thatimmigrant Latin American labor sendsback remittances. The amount of those remittancesis vast, and they can’t be underestimated.So you have $40 to $50 billionbeing sent by immigrants all over theworld, particularly from the US and Europe,back to Latin America. What dothose remittances do? Those remittancesmean that Latin Americans can buy thingsfrom the global economy and that their socialreproduction is dependent on theseglobal financial flows. In many countriesremittances are the number one source offoreign exchange, which means that thesecountries are inserted ever-deeper intoglobal capitalism. This export of labor andimport of remittances inextricably insertshundreds of millions of Latin Americansinto global financial circuits.To summarise all of this, you have thistotal changeover in the Latin American politicaleconomy. Now the new dominantsectors of accumulation in Latin Americaare intimately integrated into global accumulationcircuits. In comparison to today,in the 1960s there were still massive pocketsof society that were pre-capitalist orthat at least enjoyed some local autonomyvis-à-vis national and world capitalism.The indigenous, for instance, still had a certainautonomy from world capitalism – notindependence, but an autonomy. But 21stcenturyglobal capitalism has penetratedjust about every nook and cranny of LatinAmerica. In fact, there’s almost no autonomouspeasantry anywhere in LatinAmerica. Capitalist relations are practicallyuniversal now in the region.Indigenous communities have neverstopped resisting in 514 years. But now,they have intensified that resistance in adirect confrontation with transnationalcapital over the natural resources that arein their communities. For example, thetransnational oil companies have invadedeven the most remote outposts in Ecuadorin the past few decades. So you have theindigenous spearheading resistance to theplunder of Ecuador by the oil transnationals.We could point to the struggles aroundenergy resources in Colombia, national gasAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200793in Bolivia, the contradictory relationship ofindigenous and local communities to oil inVenezuela, the confrontation of the indigenousin Guatemala with the transnationalmining companies that in the past decadehave invaded vast new stretches of thatcountry. All this represents an intensifiedpenetration of global capital around majorresources. This is a major structural backdropto the new round of indigenous struggle,and that struggle is so important becauseit is a – perhaps the – leading edge ofthe challenged to transnational capital.Brogan: To keep on this line of argument,with the integration and penetration oftransnational capital with more domesticallyoriented factions of capital in LatinAmerica I’m reminded of a story the FinancialTimes ran recently on transnationalbanks in Venezuela which are makingrecord-level profits. This in conjunctionwith Venezuelan oil dependency on USmarkets raises some serious questionsaround resistance to global capital and aradical project of transformation. Can youspeak to these questions, especially in thecontext of Chavez’s declaration that they’recreating 21st-century socialism inVenezuela? If this commitment to buildingsocialism is believed to be genuine whatdoes that mean given the kind of integrationof the oil sector and transnationalbanks within Venezuela?Robinson: You’re getting again to the heartof what’s at stake here. Earlier you askedme to talk about the nation-state and howit relates to my theory of global capitalism.If all national economies have been reorganisedand functionally integrated ascomponent elements of a new global capitalisteconomy and all peoples experiencedheightened dependencies for their very socialreproduction on the larger global system,I do not believe it is all that viable topropose individual de-linking, that you cansimply break off from global capitalism andcreate a post-capitalist alternative.China isnow integrated into global capitalism, asare the former Soviet Union, the formerThird World revolutionary states, and soon. In the case of Venezuela, the oil and financialsystem is totally integrated intoglobal capitalism. Venezuelan oil goes tothe global capitalist market and the country’sreproduction passes through theglobal financial system – inextricably. Andso an alternative needs to be transnational;it needs to be something which begins totransform global capitalism. And that’s exactlywhat’s at stake here.But at the same time what this integrationpoints to is the structural power thatglobal capital can exercise and the possibilitythat this structural power will translateinto local political influence. Globalcapital has local representation everywhereand it translates into local pressure withineach state in favor of global capital. This isexactly what you have in Venezuela. Thereare all sorts of dangers in the sense thatthose groups most closely tied to globalcapital, transnationally-oriented businessgroups, will gain increasing influence andsquash a more radical transformative project.Indeed, the real threat to the revolutionin Venezuela is not from the rightwingpolitical opposition but that chunksof the revolutionary bloc will develop adeeper stake in defending global capitalismin Venezuela over socialist transformation.You also have the problem that state managerswill become bureaucratised as theirown reproduction will depend on deepeningrelations with global capital. To reiterate,that’s why a permanent mobilisationfrom below that forces the state to deepenits transformative project “at home” and itsAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200794counter-hegemonic transnational project“abroad” is so crucial. This is our agenda isthis new stage of global capitalism. Thematter of what can be done in each country,and how the state fits into the picture,is being fleshed out in Latin America andin Venezuela in particular. So I don’t havedefinitive answers for you because this ishistory unfolding as we speak: That historyis not predetermined, and our understandingdoes not precede but procedes this history.But let’s go back again to Venezuela andthe fact that it is selling increasing quantitiesof oil to China. Here we can see wheremy analysis of global capitalism differsfrom those of my critics. These critics seeChina’s increased relations with LatinAmerica and interpret things from the oldnation-state/inter-state centric framework.They say that China is competing with theUS, emerging as a major rival to the US,which wants to defend its declining hegemony.That’s a classic framework; that’s the“New Imperialism” school.But what’s going on in China? And howis this linked to Latin America? An increasingportion of world industrial productionhas shifted into China. China is the industrialworkhouse of the world. But this is theworkhouse of transnational capital. WhenI say transnational capital that doesn’tmean capital from outside of China againstcapital inside of China. Transnational capitalis just that – it’s transnational,meaningthat the capitalist investment class operatingin China are of Chinese, US, German,Japanese, Brazilian, South Africa, Thai, Indian,and Kuwaiti nationality,among manyothers. There are investors from all over theworld. There are capitalist groups spreadall over the world who are concentrating orglobalising capitalist accumulation insideChina and for the obvious reasons that wealready know – massive abundant cheaplabor that is also educated, the largest agglomerationeconomy in the world, a stateresponsive to the conditions necessary forglobalised accumulation, and so forth.So when China tries to expand its worldmarkets for those goods pouring out of itsglobal workhouse, it is not that the Chinese– people with Chinese passports andspeaking Chinese – are competing againstpeople from the US speaking English orpeople from France speaking French orfrom Japan speaking Japanese, all competingwith one another trying to get newmarkets in Latin America. That is the classicalframework of world capitalism in anearlier stage and it is not what is going onnow. Rather, it is global capital trying toopen up markets globally, to sustain an accumulationprocess in which the class contradictionsare not national but transnationaland in which the fiercest capitalistcompetition is not among national capitalistgroups but among transnational conglomerates.This new global capitalism hasa territorial expression particular to it becauseglobal capitalism “lands,” so tospeak, or “zones in on” particular transnationalisedterritories, such as China’s coast,in order to accumulate so for a phase ofglobal accumulation. So again there’s noway you’re going to understand US-Chinese-Latin American relations from theold nation -state-centered framework. Theargument that the US is trying to dominateLatin America and to ward off growingChinese influence—that these two countriesare competing for hegemony in LatinAmerica – totally misses the point.Latin America is increasingly supplyingraw materials to the workplace of theworld in China, exporting to the Chinesecoastal zones vast quantities of soy, copper,oil and so on. The old-style thinking con-AFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200795cludes, “Latin America is breaking awayfrom the US and it’s integrating into Chinaand it’s the end of US hegemony.” Butthat’s not what’s going on. When the coppergoes from Chile to China or when theoil from Venezuela to China it’s going thereto feed not “Chinese” but global capitalismin China, to fuel transnational accumulationtaking place in Chinese territory. Theseare not nation-state relations; they areglobal capitalist relations. If you want tounderstand Latin America’s transnationalrelations, its relationship to politicalprocesses and power structures worldwide,we need to develop a global capitalist andnot a nation-state centric framework ofanalysis.So to put two and two together, whenthe indigenous challenge oil extractionfrom the Amazon by transnational capitalthey are on the frontline of challengingglobal capitalism, whether it’s in China orthe US, no matter where that oil is goingto.Brabazon: I’m wondering if you can talkabout how the structural changes shouldbe shaping our resistance here in Canadaand the US, both politically and theoretically?What can we learn from movementsin Latin America and globally and how ourmovements can and should respond interms of the form and content of whatthey’re doing?Robinson: Increasingly North-South relations,centre-periphery relations are notnation-state or regional relations in theglobal system, but social relations that areinternal to global capitalism. So, for instance,the immigrant rights movement inthe US is, at least momentarily, the lightningrod and spearhead for resistance toglobal capitalism inside the United Statesin the same way that the July 2006 Mexicanelections and their aftermath for a fewmonthperiod was the lightning rod andspearhead for resistance to global capitalismin Mexico. And that immigrant rightsmovement is no different from the indigenousmovement in Bolivia or the popularneighborhood movement in Mexico City orthe landless workers’ movement in Brazil.We need to see popular struggles unfoldingin the US and in Canada as part of thissame wave.1968 was a key turning point in that itsignaled the rise of a world counter-hegemony,the ideological and political turningpoint which led capital to conclude that ithad to restructure the system. The crisis ofcapitalism that ensued in the early 1970sgave capital the impetus and the means toinitiate that restructuring. Capital wentglobal and unleashed neoliberalism. Now,in the late 20th century and the early 21stcentury, we are at another crossroad, like1968, in which the ideological hegemony ofglobal capitalism is cracked.We are in thebattle over how the crisis will unravel andwhat will take the place of neoliberalism.In terms of strategy and tactics, of lessonsfrom Latin America, we should focuson the fact that the working class worldwideis increasingly informalised, flexiblised.There used to be a working class concentratedat the point of production and ina situation of formality, of regulated laborwhere trade unions organised at the pointof production. Increasingly, capitalist production,the nature of accumulation, issuch that the production process is fragmentedinto thousands of different phasesand those different phases draw in someformal workers, some point-ofproductioncenters, along with endlessarmies of informalised workers who arenot even in the formal sense workers. So,increasingly, organising the working classAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200796means organising informal sector workers,it means shifting from the point of productionto the point of production and reproduction.That’s what the piqueteros do.They say that if you’re unemployed youcan’t organise into trade unions and withholdyour labor. If you’re structurally unemployedyou have to disrupt the dailyfunctioning of the system. Similarly, ifyou’re an informal sector worker you can’tmake demands on capital in the same wayas a formal sector worker. So increasingly,the type of working-class organisation thatwe need is both production and reproduction– social movement unionism, for instance,linking neighborhood struggles toformal worker centers and so forth. That’sthe type of struggle that is unfolding inLatin America and the type of struggle thatis increasingly unfolding in the US, Canada,and elsewhere. But I think we need to theorise,analyse and strategise on how youorganise working classes that are more informalthan formal, that participate directlyin production at certain times of theyear or in certain instances and at othertimes and instances participate in localcommunity reproduction, or maybe migratory,and so forth.Brabazon: I’ll just ask you to make one finalcomment that’s a little more specific. TheAFL-CIO recently launched an initiative tohelp build workers centers all over the US.I think this is one of the most positivethings that the AFL-CIO has done in a longtime – moving in the direction of organisingimmigrant workers who are in the informalsector, casualised workers. Whatyou think about that as a possible modelor does it have any potential.What do youthink?Robinson: More than just potential – that’sthe only way forward. The only demandthat would be truly the right demand, therevolutionary demand, the just demand isto end all distinctions between immigrantand national labor. The only ones thosedistinctions serve is global capital. Globalcapital accumulation is now dependent onimmigrant labor pools whereby the state isthe vehicle that reproduces the conditionof immigrant labor, and national borders(which are barriers to labor and not to capital)become functional to transnationalcapital. In this sense, Latino immigrantlabor in the US and Chinese immigrantlabor on the Chinese coast are no different,which the clarification that in China theimmigrants come from the interior of thecountry – they are Chinese but they aredisplaced peasants moving on to the coastof China and they face a similar structuralsituation of distinction and discriminationthat Latino immigrants face in the UnitedStates.In Costa Rica there are one millionNicaraguan workers who are second-classcitizens, they are immigrant workers andlabor under distinct conditions. In CostaRica there is an intense zone of accumulationlinked to globalised circuits. Costa Ricais one of the key centers of global accumulationin that particular area, and that’sbased on Nicaraguan immigrant labor.Youhave Bolivians and Peruvians and Ecuadoriansmigrating to Argentina and Chile andit’s not, again, nation-state centric but it’stransnational because it’s the global workingclass which is divided into national andimmigrant labor and this is the face ofglobal capitalism. So to the extent that theAFL-CIO organises informal sector workers,it is moving forward.Our banner mustbe an end to all distinctions between nationaland immigrant (or foreign) laborBrogan: maybe since we all met in CaracasAFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200797in Venezuela during the World SocialForum it might be appropriate to concludeon a note about the role of the World SocialForum in different projects and initiativesthat have been coming out of LatinAmerica that can help build global movementsand global networks. You have thesocial forum movement and you have theZapatistas’ new intergalactic initiativecoming out of the Sixth Declaration to reallybuild some social relations betweengroups around the world.Maybe you couldtalk about some of these projects to builda really transnational movement againstglobal capitalism, the effectiveness and soon of some of these projects and any finalcomments that you want to make?Robinson: We obviously need to move beyondthe old internationalism, to disregardborders in the sense that organic communitiesare now transnational and are selforganisingtransnationallly. For example,my grounding is in southern Californiawhere the cutting edge of popular struggleright now is the immigrant rights movement.The immigrant rights movement is aworking-class movement. The vast majorityof immigrants here are linked to familieswho themselves migrate back and forthbetween Mexico and the US or betweenCentral America and the US, or whosefamilies are split transnationally. They sendremittances back. So by definition a lot ofthese struggles we’re talking about are increasinglytransnational.To give you a concreteexample, here in Southern Californiathe “March 25 Coalition” organised andspearheaded the May 1 national strike inthe United States and Immigrant RightsDay. When electoral fraud took place inMexico in July 2006 those same leaders ofMarch 25 Coalition organised a delegationof immigrant rights organisers and representativesof the Latino community totravel to Mexico City and to participate inthe protests against that fraud. By definitionwhen people develop their struggles inthese transnational circumstances theirstruggle is transnational. We need tostrategise and push forward these modalitiesof transitional struggle.To conclude, the novel forms of struggle,of engagement with the state, and soon, that we’ve been talking about for LatinAmerica are relevant lessons for global societyincluding Canada and the US. But it’snot as if these things are happening inLatin America and we should bring themback and try to implement them here.Rather, they are happening here.How canwe deepen the transnational character ofthese worldwide struggles? ★AFRICAN COMMUNIST November 200798Head Office3rd Floor Cosatu House,1 Leyds Street,Cnr Biccard,Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2000Tel: (011) 339-3621/2Website: www.sacp.org.zaEastern Cape Province178 Buffalo Road,King William’s Town 5601Tel/Fax: (040) 635-0463email: ecape@sacp.org.zaSecretary: Mandla 082 419 3336Admin: Nobubele 078 591 5126Free State Province1st Floor Moses Kotane Bldg,44 Fichardt Str, Bloemfontein 9300Fax: (051) 448 5584email: freestate@sacporg,zaSecretary: Phel 082 576 6331Admin: Dorothy 084 693 9822Gauteng Province7th Floor North State Bldg,Cnr Kruis & Market Str,Johannesburg 2000Tel: (011) 333 9177Fax: (011) 333 6394email: gauteng@sacp.org.zaSecretary: Zico Tamela 083437 8654Chair: NKolisile 082 939 4035Admin: Phindi 083 345 7198Kwazulu Natal ProvinceRoom 602 General Bldg,47 Field Str Durban 4000Tel: (031) 301 3806/304 1169Fax: (031) 304 1169email: kzn@sacp.org.zaSecretary: 083 721 0221Org: F Bhengu 073 928 1586Admin: Nokulunga 072 010 2602Mpumalanga ProvinceNUM Offices, Smart Park Building,Eddie Street, NelspruitTel: (013) 656 – 2045Fax: (013) 690 1286/656 0291email: mpumalanga@sacp.org.zaSecretary: Bonakele Majuba082 885 5940Admin: Prudence 072 928 8055Northern Cape ProvinceSanlam Building, 1st Floor,Johnes Street, Kimberley 8300Secretary: Norman Shushu082 376 8311Organiser: Tsepho 073 094 6027Tel: (053) 831 2512Fax: (053) 832 9464/5855Limpopo Province1st Floor Mimosa Bldg, Room 22,58 Market Str, PolokwaneTel: (015) 291 3672Fax: (015) 295 7773/ 291 3232email: limpopo@sacp.org.zaSecretary: Justice Pitso 082 669 3987Admin: Norman Rapholo 072 807 2352North West Province2nd Floor Jacob Bldg,Cnr Kerk & Boom Str, Klerksdorp 2570Tel: (018) 462 5675Fax: (018) 462 4322email: northwest@sacp.org.zaSecretary: M Sambatha 072 360 6861Chair: W Sebolai 083 613 1904Admin: Kelebogile 073 253 4452Western Cape ProvinceNo1 Church Str, Dumbarton House,Cape Town 8001Tel: (021) 425 1950Fax: (021) 425 1956/424 4667email: wcape@sacp.org.zaSecretary: Themba 083 303 6988Org: X Ndongeni 072 290 2153Where to contact the SACP